Fighting Games To Play: PC

Showing posts with label PC. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Mortal Kombat 4 Review

The Mortal Kombat series is one of the premier gaming series' around today. The series, which until now utilized digitized actors to give the game an extra layer of realism, has been the topic of comic books, movies, action figures, and even Senate hearings. The fourth time around the game has gone polygonal, giving the developers much more leeway when it comes to adding new moves, holds, and characters. Also, weapons have been added into the mix, with each character possessing a different sword, club, or staff to beat his enemies with.

The storyline of MK4 picks up the loose ends left behind by both MK3 and MK Mythologies: Sub-Zero. With Shao Kahn defeated, Shinnok picks up the slack as the main bad guy. However, he is also a selectable character, which left arcade players with no big boss to look forward to. To remedy that, the home version contains MK1's four-armed bad boy, Goro. Goro looks terrific in 3D, moves very fluidly, and has all the great moves he had in MK1, as well as a few additional ones. He isn't selectable from the start, but he'll be available via a code. Returning characters include Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, Sonya, and Raiden. Most of the old characters maintain their old moves, and add a new one here and there. The new characters fit very well into the MK universe, a welcome change from most fighting game sequels.

The graphics of the N64 version aren't as good as the arcade version. That's pretty much a given. But they still look very good, make great use of light sourcing, and run at a very high speed. There are a few moments where the frame rate dips, but not enough to cause a problem with the gameplay. The sound is definitely the high-water mark for the N64. The music sounds very nice, and the game has all the speech from the arcade, including the intro and endings. This is quite a surprise, considering the large amount of speech in the game.

The gameplay is very close to the arcade, but the N64 controller gets in the way. The default setup simply isn't very good, but with a few changes and some practice, you'll become proficient fairly quickly. Some of the fatalities in the game are much harder to do on the N64 pad, as they require you to hit multiple buttons at the same time. The combo system has been greatly simplified. Each character can start a combo the same way, and some of the more damaging moves in the previous games (the uppercut, for instance) have been weakened. The introduction of weapons seems silly at first, but once you've played for a while and gotten used to using them, they really do add a new dimension to the game. Each character has two fatalities, and there are two stage fatalities. The fatalities look nice, but too many of them are merely 3D updates to old fatalities, and the new fatalities in MK4 simply aren't that great. It would have been nice to see some more innovation here. A few modes have been added to the game, including a practice mode, which shows all the characters' moves and fatalities. There are also three types of endurance fights, a team battle mode, and a tournament mode.

The N64 has been hurting for a good fighting game since its inception. MK4 finally fills that gap. If you haven't liked any of the previous MK titles, MK4 probably won't win you over. But this is an excellent translation of a good arcade title, and fans of the arcade version won't be disappointed at all.

Friday, March 30, 2012

Virtua Fighter 2 Review

Virtua Fighter 2 was a classic 3D fighting game that really cemented Viruta Fighter as a serious name in fighting games. Arcades, especially in Japan, were packed full of players looking to hone their skills in this highly technical, timing-driven fighter. But you're not getting a faithful version of that arcade classic here on the Wii's Virtual Console series. No, for 800 points ($8) you get the practically unknown version that was released on the Sega Genesis. It squashes all of the arcade version's action into a 2D game but does not contain any of the thrilling gameplay or strategy found in the original game.

However, that's not to say that VF2 for the Genesis is completely without merit. It's actually kind of interesting to see how many moves and combos from the original game made it into this version of the game. The same old punch-punch-punch-kick combo from Sarah is still in there; Jacky can do his double spinning backfist; and so on. The controls are also the same as the arcade version, with guard, punch, and kick buttons. Of course, the timing is completely butchered, so it's not actually entertaining for very long. Still, as a curiosity from days past, the Genesis version of Virtua Fighter 2 is sort of neat. It's just not neat enough to be worth $8, that's all.

The Virtual Console is certainly capable of running such games as Virtua Fighter 2 for the Genesis; the emulation seems accurate enough, right down to the awful animation. But this is one of those situations where you sit back and wonder why, exactly, this game is coming to the Virtual Console at all. Anyone old enough to remember the Genesis game probably knows to stay away, and anyone who only knows of the recent Virtua Fighter installments won?t find anything to like with this ugly chapter in the series? history. Your Wii Virtual Console fighting dollars are better spent on something like Street Fighter II.

Street Fighter IV Review

It's obvious that each iteration of the long-running Street Fighter series has been carefully tuned and tweaked to the finest degree, and nowhere is this more apparent than in Street Fighter IV. The lessons learned in the franchise's 20-plus years have been used to prune back the core fighting experience to create something truly special. Street Fighter IV isn't a success simply because it's one of the most technically complex 2D fighters ever made, it's a success because it's also wrapped inside a layer of absolute accessibility. Never has the old "A minute to learn, a lifetime to master" adage been truer than it is here.

The Street Fighter fundamentals have remained consistent over the years; your job is to knock out the other guy or gal. All 12 of the classic world warriors--Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Blanka, E. Honda, Zangief, Guile, Dhalsim, Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison--are back and playable from the outset, and they're joined by six brand-new and diverse characters. Abel, a mixed martial arts grapple-style character; Crimson Viper a female fighter with sweeping, airborne fire attacks; Rufus, a rotund fighter whose body makes him a bit of a sight gag despite his deceptive speed; and El Fuerte, a pro wrestler whose rushes and air throws make him a slippery foe. Ryu and Ken's sensei, Gouken, also makes his playable-character debut in Street Fighter IV. Naturally, he didn't teach the boys everything he knows, so when they meet again he has a few tricks up his sleeves, including a horizontal and vertical fireball EX move. The game's new end boss, Seth, fills the last spot and joins the list once you've unlocked everyone else. Character balance is absolutely spot-on across the entire roster, and as a result, you should never feel that you can't compete simply because you've chosen one character over another.

You'll need to finish the game multiple times and in special ways to unlock the complete character list. Doing so will make fan favourites Cammy, Sakura, Akuma, Fei Long, Rose, Gen, and Dan playable. Like previous games in the series, Street Fighter IV lets you perform powerful super combos, but it has removed air blocking and parrying completely. Developers Capcom and Dimps have added a completely new gameplay system: focus attacks, a new multipurpose offensive and defensive ability that can be charged to one of three levels by pressing and holding the medium punch and kick buttons simultaneously. There's no onscreen bar to show how charged your attack is, so you'll need to rely on the progressively darkening ink splashes surrounding your character model. Each character features a unique focus animation, so you shouldn't have any trouble working it out after a few rounds with each. Focus attacks make you vulnerable to damage because you need to be standing still to charge them (though you can dash forward or backward to cancel them), but the trade-off is that you'll absorb the first hit without the penalty of an animation reset, allowing for an instant counterattack if you land it. They can also act as armour-breaking moves, shutting down more-powerful attacks. Successfully landing a fully charged focus attack will deal damage and crumple your opponent to the ground, giving you the chance to follow up with an unblockable hit as he or she falls.

The new mechanic also lets you use part of your EX power-meter charge to exit animations early and chain bigger combos together. They take a little getting used to and some serious thumb dexterity, but once they're mastered, you can perform moves such as dragon-punch stalls directly into super moves or use them to juggle players in midair with multiple hits. Your revenge meter builds as you take damage, whereas the EX meter fills as you dish it out. EX power rolls over to the next round, but revenge must be built from scratch each time. This becomes a crucial risk-versus-reward mechanic. Do you take hits to build revenge and power up an ultra attack, or do you deal damage to burn your EX on improved moves, cancels, or save it for a super finisher? The flexibility of this system means that you're free to play according to your strengths and style. But just like reversals, EX power-ups, and ultra combo attacks, focus attacks serve to mix up the experience only for veteran players; such is the game's balance that they have never been required to win a match, and they act more as an additional weapon in the arsenal of a skilled player. They're waiting for you when you want to take a step up and learn how they work, but well-timed basic punches and kicks are just as effective.

The single-player mode is robust and has a lot to offer across several components. Arcade mode pits you against a set number of fights from your unlocked-character roster and culminates in a showdown with Seth. Along the way to your goal, you'll always encounter a rival fight. These are regular fights accompanied by an in-engine exchange with your opponent. They're a welcome mix-up but often add nothing to the character's storyline because some fighters clearly don't even know why they hate one another. Each character's adventure is bookended by an anime-style cinematic movies that explain his or her motivations for attending the tournament. They're quite short and keep story to an absolute minimum, but they get the message across and do a reasonable-enough job of filling in the gaps. Given the amount of additional content shoehorned into this game, we were slightly disappointed to find that no bonus levels have been included, especially since we had high hopes of reliving our car and barrel smashing from Street Fighter II.

Regardless of whether you're down with busting out a tatsumaki senpukyaku at will or think it's some kind of egg-noodle dish, there's a difficulty mode here for you. Eight levels ranging from very easy to hardest are available, so you're sure to find one appropriate for your skill level. That said, even at the gentler difficulties, Street Fighter IV is no cakewalk because your opponents will occasionally mix things up with surprise super and ultra combos. First-timers will have no trouble picking up, playing, and learning as they go. Playing on the medium or above difficulty will also enable score tracking, letting you submit and compare to other players on the game's online leaderboards.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Last Bronx Review

Last Bronx was a Sega Model 2 fighting game that enjoyed a decent amount of success in Japanese arcades but barely drummed up any business stateside. Only eight characters are available in the game, plus Red Eye, the game's boss. Six of the game's characters look like typical street thugs, but the other two look like they just got finished taping an episode of 90210. The big difference between Last Bronx and the Virtua Fighter series is the inclusion of weapons.

The 3D graphics are good - for the Saturn. The polygonal fighters move smoothly and quickly, due in part to the game's 60fps action. And while the game doesn't really need an illusion of speed, the characters' weapons leave trails when you swing them, which gives the game an even faster appearance. The main problem is that Last Bronx suffers from the same disappearing polygons that affected the original Virtua Fighter on the Saturn. Also, background elements occasionally vanish. It's really a very annoying effect, and it mars the otherwise clean graphics.

The game's sound and music almost aren't worth mentioning. The only facet of the audio that isn't run-of-the-mill is the somewhat catchy song that plays during the intro.

The gameplay of Last Bronx is way too close to all of Sega's other fighting games. It's almost as if Sega figured that by giving the characters weapons and slightly boosting the graphics, no one would notice that the game engine is nearly identical to Virtua Fighter 2. The controls are also exactly the same. Heck, even a lot of the combos remained the same. Although characters jump differently - taking on more of a Mortal Kombat-style flip than the soaring Virtua Fighter jumps - the characters will still float if they're being comboed through the air.

Overall, the game is too much like VF2 to be exciting in any way. Just pound on punch, then block. It's a decent game, but the lack of originality really buries it. If you don't already have a Sega fighting game, pick up Fighters' Megamix instead. It still reigns supreme.

Dark Rift Review

With every release of a new system, there is a series of firsts that help define the system - and ultimately who will be best served by it. The Nintendo 64 has already had its first original sports game, its first shooter, its first racing game, and its first arcade translation. Dark Rift is the system's first native fighting game. And if indeed this game helps to define the Nintendo 64, it chalks up another point in the "not bad, but I wouldn't actually pay money for this game" column.

Dark Rift is the product of Kronos, the same company responsible for the abysmal PlayStation fighter Criticom. While Dark Rift isn't a sequel, the lackluster fighting contained on the cart might as well have been culled from a mythical realm called Criticom II. On the upside, Dark Rift isn't quite as bad as Criticom. But the two games are still a little too similar for Dark Rift to slide through the VGS offices unscathed.

The graphics of Dark Rift represent the game's lone strength. The characters move very quickly, and for the most part, smoothly. Also, the N64's graphical prowess is exploited in this title, resulting in some nice lighting effects. The only dull point is the characters themselves: they're very blocky, presumably to keep the frame rate up.

Playing Dark Rift can be compared to playing Konami's classic arcade game, Track & Field - the faster you pound the buttons, the better you'll do. The three attack buttons are part of the C button cluster, which makes it nice and easy to hit them all with only one finger. So easy, in fact, that I'm typing this part of the review with one hand - the other being on the three attack buttons and the block button - and I'm still winning. Fun. Aside from these buttons, there are two sidestep buttons (only helpful when trying to avoid projectiles), a throw button, and a special button. The latter doesn't do anything when pressed by itself, but when combined with fireball motions or double taps, it executes fireballs, super kicks, and a few other moves, depending on the character.

With its questionable character design and repetitive gameplay, the only gameplay variation Dark Rift brings to the fighting game table is its default three-out-of-five matches (as opposed to the standard best two-out-of-three). The rest feels like a Virtua Fighter-inspired mishmash of monsters, demons, and guys with guns. The graphic effects are the only things that save Dark Rift from falling below average. As much as I hate to say this, I'd rather be playing War Gods.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Guilty Gear X Review

There's no need for feeling guilty about still liking 2D fighting games in this day and age. Though the genre has seen few changes since the release of Capcom's Street Fighter II a decade ago, the fighting game remains characterized by its fast, responsive gameplay and competitive spirit--features that will never go out of style. Guilty Gear X, a visually impressive and altogether very Japanese fighting game, is good evidence that the genre isn't going anywhere, for better or worse. The game's bizarre yet likable characters, familiar mechanics, and colorful, high-resolution graphics can make it a lot of fun for fans of previous 2D fighting games. At the same time, Guilty Gear X offers little that hasn't been done before--not that its tried-and-true concepts don't make for fun matches.

Guilty Gear X is actually a port of a Dreamcast game that was never released in this country, which itself is the sequel to the 1998 PlayStation fighting game, simply called Guilty Gear. As a sequel, Guilty Gear X offers what you might expect--better graphics, some new characters, and some new moves and techniques. Like in its predecessor, the far-flung setting of Guilty Gear X immediately stands out. Each of the game's 14 initially selectable characters looks unusual to say the least, though on the other hand, the game's roots in anime and manga are obvious, as is the direct influence of other popular fighting games on Guilty Gear X's character design. At any rate, the cast of Guilty Gear X--featuring well-built, strangely clothed lanky guys with names like Axl Low, Chipp Zanuff, and Sol Badguy, and cute yet not-so-surprisingly powerful gals like Jam Kuradoberi and Millia Rage--will more than likely make or break the game for you. If you can't deal with special moves with such names as "Mr. Dolphin!" and "Dim Bomber," or characters that look nothing like normal people, then you won't like Guilty Gear X. These same things might just as soon attract you to the game, though. Guilty Gear X is the sort of game that provides a brief glimpse of how different gaming can be in Japan compared with this country, and if nothing else, it's always good to see domestic versions of games that are so decidedly foreign.

The gameplay isn't nearly as weird as the game's style and appearance might first suggest. If you're familiar with other 2D fighting games, you'll soon recognize that most every one of the game mechanics found in Guilty Gear X can be traced directly to some other fighting game either by Capcom or by SNK. Guilty Gear X uses the PlayStation 2 pad's face buttons for attacks--your character can execute punches, kicks, and light and heavy slashes with his or her weapon of choice. The game takes many cues from the spectacular battles of Capcom's Marvel Superheroes games, in that most characters can dash back and forth, execute super jumps several stories high, chain together strings of punches, slashes, and kicks, block in midair, counterattack from a blocking position, and much more. Guilty Gear X also borrows Street Fighter Alpha III's midair recovery system--you can juggle your opponent with consecutive hits in midair, but the opponent has a chance to snap out of it by pressing two attack buttons simultaneously as he's getting pounded.

TMNT: Mutant Melee Review

Based on the current Saturday-morning cartoon series, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game franchise has gone from merely average to downright lousy in the span of 18 months. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Melee is the latest of the crop, coming just six months after the last game's release. Alarming as that timeline is, Mutant Melee is so low-quality that it's hard to believe it took a full six months of development time to put it together. This is an incredibly slapdash and barren game that has absolutely nothing to offer you beyond monotonous, almost-broken fighting mechanics, tiny environments, and a bunch of lame unlockables. If you were holding out hope that Konami would finally right the Turtles franchise, Mutant Melee may be the last sign you'll need to finally abandon any and all faith.

Unlike the last two TMNT games, Mutant Melee aims to be more of a multiplayer-focused arena fighting game, sort of in the vein of Power Stone or Super Smash Bros. Melee. Instead, it ends up closer to something like Stake: Fortune Fighters, in terms of quality. The main problem is that the fighting mechanics feel like they're built entirely off the action from the TMNT beat-'em-up games. Konami's Hawaii studio has gone to the trouble of adding a couple of three-button combos for each character, but the action is still repetitive. Hit, hit, knockdown; hit, hit, knockdown; and so on. The game attempts to break up the monotony of the fighting controls by throwing in a special move you can perform, but that doesn't help. Couple the bad mechanics with some thoroughly bad character balancing--some characters, like Michelangelo, are incredibly easy to abuse, whereas others, like Donatello, are near worthless--and what you have is some downright unpleasant gameplay.

The other way the game tries to break things up is by adding some weapons, power-ups, and occasional obstacles to each fighting arena. Basically, you can run around breaking open crates, and you'll find weapons like big swords, axes, and machine guns to nail your opponents with. It's a nice idea, but it's horribly executed. The special weapons just aren't worth using; despite the fact that they do a little more damage than the average hit, they're impossible to use effectively. The timing of the hits for special melee weapons is beyond insane, and the guns are too hard to aim properly. The power-ups are a little better. You can get attack strength as well as defense and speed bonuses, and each work as advertised, but they don't end up helping matters much.

The arena obstacles, which differ from level to level, are easily the dumbest aspect of fights. If you're fighting in a back alley, sometimes cars will drive through the middle of the arena, hitting people as they go. If you're fighting on a rooftop, sometimes bombs will randomly drop, and you'll have to jump to another rooftop before the whole building collapses. Once again, these aren't bad ideas, but they come across as lazy ways to try to dress up the otherwise lousy fighting and the completely cramped arenas. Every arena in the game feels cardboard-box-size in scale, with no room to move around or maneuver, and they all look pretty weak to boot.

There's also just not a whole lot to do in Mutant Melee. There are two modes of play: a really basic multiplayer mode with variants on king of the hill and survival battles, and the god-awful adventure mode. Imagine if you had to make a Turtles storyline for 10 different characters, but had no time, no writers, and no ability to make cutscenes--whatever would you do? Well, for starters, you would start out with a text intro, set up each stage with a quick thing like, "You've got to get into the lab! Beat down the foot soldiers!" and then repeat throughout each stage of the mode until you got to the end, where you would see another lame text screen. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? Each stage pretty much consists of beating up all the enemies onscreen, and in the rare instance that it does try to deviate from that blueprint--as is the case in certain stages where you'll have to, say, operate a mechanical arm to pick up larger enemies and dump them in molten metal, all while trying to avoid said enemies--the game becomes almost unplayable. Your reward for braving the adventure mode is a bunch of character art, assorted other fan-service extras, and more playable characters that you'll probably never even want to play with.

In terms of graphics and sound, you're basically looking at the same quality of the last Turtles game, though with no animated cutscenes or much in the way of voice acting. The in-game graphics are the same cel-shaded graphics found in Battle Nexus, though with slightly more polished character models offset by some glitchy animations. The Xbox and GameCube iterations of the game look nearly identical, so you won't find any graphical differences between them. The audio consists largely of the same generic soundtrack as in the last two games and repetitive, annoying voice samples that repeat like crazy. In summary, this game neither sounds nor looks very good.

Mutant Melee simply amounts to an extremely poor effort. It seems to exist solely for the purpose of taking advantage of the fans of the TMNT cartoon. Regardless of your opinion of the show, or past games in the series, be sure to steer clear of Mutant Melee.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Celebrity Deathmatch Review

Celebrity Deathmatch, MTV's clay-animated comedy series, featuring random celebrities killing one another off in an exaggerated, gladiatorlike fashion, was a surprise hit back in 1998 when it debuted as a part of MTV's own Super Bowl halftime show. Since its initial matchup between shock-rocker Marilyn Manson and convicted mass murderer Charles Manson, hundreds of different celebrity matchups have been featured on the show, ranging from the marginally relevant (Bob Barker vs. Weakest Link host Anne Robinson) to the utterly insane (psychic John Edwards vs. Nostradamus). While the show is still technically on the air, Celebrity Deathmatch isn't quite at the level of popularity it once was, which makes the timing of Gotham Games' console and PC representation of the show, MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch, a bit peculiar. However, Celebrity Deathmatch's biggest problem isn't its timing, but, rather, it's the absolutely horrid gameplay and complete lack of any worthwhile features.

Celebrity Deathmatch contains a decent number of real-life celebrities, available for your personal amusement, including the aforementioned Marilyn Manson, Carmen Electra, Dennis Rodman, Anna Nicole Smith, Mr. T, Carrot Top, Jerry Springer, Ron Jeremy, Miss Cleo, Cindy Margolis, Busta Rhymes, Shannen Doherty, Tommy Lee, and all five members of N'Sync. Each celebrity has his or her own unique--albeit narrow--range of attacks set to reflect his or her personality. Anna Nicole Smith, for instance, can hit you with a large drumstick of meat, send her yappy little dog after you, or smash you with a pair of melons (the fruit variety, thankfully). Every character also has a special kill attack that can be performed once your opponent's life meter has dropped to nil. Mr. T drops the A-Team van on you; Tommy Lee plays your intestines like an electric guitar; and Ron Jeremy drops a pair of oversized balls on you--disco balls, that is. It doesn't get much more gimmicky than Celebrity Deathmatch's premise; but whereas the TV show manages to stay reasonably fresh from week to week, by providing at least timely and semi-relevant comedy, the game's version of the gimmick is so utterly limited that you'll be done with it almost immediately.

The most limiting thing about Celebrity Deathmatch isn't actually even its gimmick, but, rather, its gameplay system. Every fighter has an extremely short list of attacks available to them, and only about half of these are actually useful. Some attacks are so insanely gimmicky that they actually buck any sort of functionality or usefulness for the sake of a joke. Additionally, the attack system is about as rudimentary as you'll ever find, involving so little skill that all you'll ever need to do to win a match is just hammer on the attack buttons until your opponent is dead. Sure, they'll occasionally block, but not often enough to ever require any form of strategy or plan of attack on your part.

The word "limited" is highly useful when describing the roster of modes in the game as well. The only two gameplay modes featured in the game are deathmatch and episode. Deathmatch is just a stand-alone match between any of the fighters in the game. Episode lets you choose from six available "episodes" of the show, each one with three predetermined fights on the card. Once you've beaten an episode, you'll unlock a hidden character (like Frankenstein or a generic alien) and a new fight arena as well. It should only take you about 90 minutes--tops--to blaze through the episode mode, and once you've unlocked everything, that's all she wrote. The game also has a create-a-celebrity mode, which, theoretically, is supposed to let you create your own roster of famous people to bludgeon to death. Once again, however, the word "limited" comes into play, as there just aren't many options to choose from in this mode, leaving you with only a scant few options and no real ability to create anyone recognizable.

Celebrity Deathmatch's graphics and sound are also decisively lacking in pretty much every way. The game doesn't really try to emulate the show's clay-animated art style, and, instead, goes for a straight cartoon-styled polygonal translation of each celebrity. The models for the characters look decent enough, but each of them lacks much in the way of animation. There's a few different deathmatch arenas to try out, but none of them look particularly good. The game's audio is a bit better, thanks to the infrequently amusing commentary of Johnny Gomez and Nick Diamond. It's functional commentary, though a lot of the humor is a little on the crude and offensive side. (In fact, there's far more offensive humor in the game--more than the TV show ever allowed.) Cheesy voice actors play the parts of the various celebrities, and they're no worse than the actors employed on the show. The rest of the audio might as well not even exist, as it consists largely of poorly mixed sound effects and the show's looping theme song, which only plays in menu screens.

MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch is a mess from top to bottom. The jokes are rarely ever funny, the gameplay is a veritable smorgasbord of repetitive and boring action, and the underwhelming graphics and sound don't help matters. If you're a fan of the TV program, you may find Celebrity Deathmatch amusing for the 20 minutes it takes to see every single gag in the game once, and even that might be a bit of a stretch. As for anyone else, stay as far away from Celebrity Deathmatch as is humanly possible.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Virtual On Review

Virtual On is a game that can't make up its mind. On one hand it's a fighting game where players pick from a collection of robots, each with its strengths and weaknesses. On the other hand, Virtua On is a tank-inspired shooter, meant to be played with dual sticks. And while it shone brightly in the arcades, on the Saturn it merely gives off a dull glint. But don't blame the Saturn for this - blame the game.

The game is simple and to the point. Two robots enter an arena. They stare each other down. Then they jump, fly, run, and shoot each other until one of them finally explodes. Each robot has three different attacks that power-up when fired while the robot is running or flying. Each 'bot wields two standard-fare weapons that include run-of-the-mill homing lasers, bombs, or shotguns. Each robot also possesses a third, special offensive weapon that is a little more spectacular (they consist of sword attacks and huge dual lasers, among other things).

Virtual On's polygon graphics look sharp, but on the Saturn the game doesn't feel nearly as smooth as it did in the arcade, especially in the split-screen two-player mode. The standard control is tolerable, but the twin stick (available direct from Sega) is much better and more intuitive. The music isn't anything special, and the sound effects are pretty standard. The game also features a very annoying alarm that sounds when your robot is nearly out of power.

The play in Virtual On is fairly basic. All a player needs to do to beat the computer is dash back and forth, firing off a homing weapon. This tactic works all the way up to the last boss, who as it turns out, is a nearly unstoppable mass of metal.

In the end, Virtual On is a mindless chunk of fun. There isn't much to it, but it's the type of game that can be picked up and put down at the drop of a dime. Have five minutes to spare? Play a round or two of Virtual On, then move on with your life. Maybe that's why it did so well in the arcades; one could blow up a couple of robots, and then go play a real game.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Street Fighter Alpha 2 Review

Saturn owners should be pleased to know that Street Fighter Alpha 2's translation from coin-op to home is almost flawless. The graphics are solid and done in the same anime style as the first Alpha. The animation is topnotch, as are the sounds and music. The backgrounds are first rate, giving Alpha 2 some of the best scenery yet seen in a Street Fighter game.

The game features 18 fighters this time around - and for the first time Akuma is directly playable. Zangeif and Dhalsim, from Street Fighter 2, have returned. Some new fighters have also entered the fray, including a very cool old assassin named Gen who can switch fighting styles. Alpha 2, however, forgoes any semblance of a plot right from the start (the player doesn't find out what's going with his favorite character until the final fight). It also does away with the before-fight conversation, save for final the boss round. Moreover, the fighting engine has been tweaked to give the game some distinction from the previous Street Fighter games, including the original Street Fighter Alpha (which was a prequel to Street Fighter 2, making Street Fighter Alpha 2 the sequel to a prequel of a sequel to the original Street Fighter).

Control is, as usual, exceptional. Smooth, responsive, and intuitive, gameplay is dead-on. The most notable addition here is the custom combo technique: When the player hits three attack buttons while the combo bar is powered up, he can absolutely hammer the other fighter for a few seconds (racking up some awesome combos in the process). The super combo moves, and the plethora of special moves that players have come to know and love, are also present and accounted for. Capcom's 2-D fighters have always been among the best, and Street Fighter Alpha 2 is their best home conversion yet.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Mortal Kombat Trilogy Review

It seemed like a good idea. Take all three and a half Mortal Kombat games and cram them into one. And at its heart, it was. In effect though, it ended up something else entirely.

Mortal Kombat Trilogy on the Sega Saturn is a nearly identical port of last year's PlayStation version of the game, for all the good and bad that entails. It includes 32 playable kombatants (plus the four MK/MKII alternates of Kano, Raiden, Kung Lao, and Jax), stages, fatalities (and all the other humiliating finishing moves), and a handful of new moves - all together providing quite a bit of value for the player, right? Well, there are a few problems along the way that keep everything from seeming quite so rosy.

Just like the PlayStation version of the game, the character balancing and computer AI are atrocious. Fighters such as Noob Saibot and Jade are incredibly overpowered, with moves that run from rendering projectiles ineffective to making characters momentarily powerless. Meanwhile, the AI often simply works in clockwork response to your own actions. For example, try a special move and certain opponents will dodge it and execute an attack before you can block. This would be less obnoxious if they didn't do it the same way every single time, making it entirely frustrating and totally unlike playing a real human being.

When it comes down to it though, I consider this the best version of MKT out there, as it does have a certain amount of value in letting you play all your favorite MK characters against each other. My preference for the Sega controller for fighting games makes me like it slightly more than the PlayStation version, which in turn was worlds better than the atrocious Nintendo 64 revision. Unfortunately, there are a few things that could've been added to make it clearly better, such as character balancing and AI tweaks, and to a lesser extent, endings, vs. screens, and full animations for all the boss characters. After a year of waiting, it's pretty sad that they're not all present. Having a cartridge add-on for the game could've helped make the animations really incredible, though at least it's understandable that the developers didn't go that route.

In the end, Mortal Kombat Trilogy really symbolizes how out of hand the whole MK series has gotten with the "-alities" and all. Sure it was a great idea to include features people had rumored about on the Internet, but face it, Animalities suck. And Brutalities, even more so. It's the worst kind of punishment to get a demonstration of all of them after winning the game. Luckily, Ed Boon and John Tobias seem to have realized this, and have gone back to basics with Mortal Kombat 4, having only fatalities. Thank God.

Mortal Kombat Trilogy Review

Mortal Kombat Trilogy is the last gasp of this 2D game, and the only remaining question is: Will Mortal Kombat leave the realm of 2D with an awesome bang, or will it whimper and die? So, like the kombatants themselves, let's get right down to it: Players who enter the tournament on the Nintendo 64 should prepare themselves for feeble misadventure not worthy of the Mortal Kombat name.

If Mortal Kombat Trilogy on the Nintendo 64 has a plus side, it comes from its multiple play modes. In addition to the normal one-on-one fighting, Mortal Kombat Trilogy keeps the two-on-two and eight-player tournament mode (found in Ultimate MK3) and adds a three-on-three battle, which keeps the fight going for quite a long time. The game plays identically to the arcade, although the N64 controller isn't perfectly suited for a game of this nature.

The downslide continues in the form of character selection: The Nintendo 64 combines the characters from all the Mortal Kombat games into one package, but to conserve memory it left out such favorites as Goro, Kintaro, and the unmasked Sub-Zero. (By contrast, these characters are found on the Playstation version of Mortal Kombat Trilogy.)

But the N64 game receives its fatal wound from the graphics and sound. Not only will players encounter a massive amount of slowdown whenever more than a few bones go flying, but also several missing frames of animation are conspicuously absent. The result is graphics that look faded and jagged, as if they were cut out of a magazine, scanned, and then pasted into the game. When played side-by-side, the PlayStation version makes the N64 version look like it's on a SNES. Then there's the sound: The digitized sound effects are utterly atrocious. In fact, it's so muffled that players may as well put their speakers on the other side of a cement wall before starting the game. The music is typical of a non-CD game - that is to say, worthless. It's tinny and very electronic sounding.

Mortal Kombat Trilogy proves that the Nintendo 64 is merely mortal. While it surpasses the Playstation version in regard to load time, it still suffers a three or four second delay when loading a new character in multiplayer fighting. Ultimately, only Mortal Kombat addicts, who don't already own a PlayStation, will find this game worth picking up.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior Review

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is the game that started it all, the fighting game that begat 2D fighting games as we know them and the launching pad for one of the greatest franchises in gaming history. Now it's available for the Wii's Virtual Console--the 1992 Super Nintendo Entertainment System port of it, that is, not the arcade original. Still, as arcade ports went in those days, the SNES port of SF II was excellent all around. The visuals were scaled back a bit, and the audio wasn't quite the same as in the arcade version, but the fantastic fighting translated remarkably well to the old SNES controller, and it still holds up well today as a downloadable Wii game.

World Warrior marked the debut of the core eight fighters that are synonymous nowadays with the words "Street Fighter." You pick your chosen fighter and take on the remaining brawlers in a series of fights until you've bested them all, and then you move on to the four frightening boss fighters. If you don't know how Street Fighter II plays, then you don't know anything about 2D fighters, since the majority of other 2D fighters have borrowed at least something from this game. For all intents and purposes, this is an exact port of the SNES version. For the reasons mentioned previously, it's not as great a game as the arcade original, but the controls are surprisingly tight, and the gameplay still pops, even all these years later. You will need a classic controller to play the game, and the good news is that the controls on the D pad feel great. You could also use a GameCube controller to play the game, but that's not ideal. The button layout on the GameCube controller isn't conducive to an enjoyable experience with this game's control scheme, and the teensy D pad makes it difficult to pull off certain moves.

The one drawback about World Warrior's release on the Virtual Console is that it's actually the least enjoyable version of Street Fighter II ever released on the SNES. Capcom later released ports of Street Fighter II Turbo and Super Street Fighter II on the system, and those ports trumped the original World Warrior release soundly (more characters, better game speed, improved gameplay balance, and more). A cynic could surmise that Capcom put World Warrior out first on the Virtual Console so that it can continue to milk Street Fighter fans with later releases of the other, improved versions. Still, it's not certain what the future holds for Street Fighter games on the Virtual Console, and strictly judged on its own merits, World Warrior is still a true classic of the fighting game genre and is one of the best multiplayer games you'll find on the Virtual Console. At 800 Wii points ($8), it's not a bad deal in the slightest. But with all that said, here's to hoping that Turbo and Super find their way to the Virtual Console sometime in the near future.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Street Fighter Alpha Review

The Game Boy has never been a particularly good system for fighting games. This is mostly because few companies have tried to release a fighting game for the Game Boy. Street Fighter Alpha is a surprisingly good port of Capcom's arcade fighting game, with pretty amazing graphics and excellent control.

As previously stated, the graphics are pretty impressive. The backgrounds of the arcade version are duplicated pretty well, right down to the walking cat in the Return of the Dragon-inspired scene. The fighters may be a little low on facial detail, but they animate extremely well, and each has his or her own fighting stance and moves. The smoothness of the animation leads to better gameplay - no jerky motion like the GB version of Street Fighter II. The game is also nice and colorful, making good use of the Game Boy Color's palette.

The game uses one button for punch and one for kick. Quick button taps execute light attacks, while full presses are used for fierce and roundhouse. Oh, and the select button taunts. Yes, taunting isn't all that useful, but it just shows the attention to detail put into this game. The game's sound isn't going to win any awards, but it's definitely adequate.

Overall, Street Fighter Alpha stands alone as the best fighting game to ever hit the Game Boy. The gameplay is almost as solid as the arcade version, the animation is superimpressive, and most importantly, it's still a whole lot of fun.

Friday, March 9, 2012

The King of Fighters 2001 Review

Arcade-game developer SNK officially went out of business in 2001, but that hasn't seemed to slow down what is apparently a new generation of games for the company's NeoGeo arcade hardware. One of the last projects the company was working on was The King of Fighters 2001, the latest edition in SNK's annual fighting game series, along with a new developer, Eolith. And while certain aspects of KOF 2001 may seem very different from previous games, spend some time with it and you'll eventually realize that it's one of the deepest, most technical 2D fighting games ever made.

It's no secret that SNK's NeoGeo hardware is old. Over 10 years old. That's why its games still use low-resolution, hand-drawn sprites for its characters, rather than switching to a 3D engine or at least using high-frame-rate, high-resolution graphics. The age of the NeoGeo hardware seems painfully obvious when you look at KOF 2001's shoddy background stages, which look generic at best and ugly and pixelated at worst. But over the years, SNK's artists have perfected a bunch of visual tricks to help add detail to their characters and give them lots of personality. And KOF 2001's characters have lots of personality--as much as you'd expect from SNK, a company with a history of making some of the most distinctive and memorable 2D fighting game characters ever. You'll see it in your character's win poses and taunts and in other extra animations. It's true (and unfortunate) that KOF 2001 reuses a lot of old character animation from previous games, so that some characters--especially the newest ones--look better than others. But most characters have at least some new animations, win poses, and special attacks--more than enough to make each one more interesting than they were in the previous game, KOF 2000.

Another KOF tradition is good voice acting; KOF 2001's voice work is about as good as it was in 2000. Sullen, moody characters like Iori and Kyo snarl and sneer appropriately, while upbeat, smart-mouthed characters like Ramon and Joe hurl insults at their opponents and laugh in their faces. KOF 2001's sound effects are pretty much adequate; they resemble those from previous years, which is just fine. Quick jabs sound like quick jabs, strong punches sound like strong punches, and KOF's infamous suite of flashy explosions and fiery bursts of flame sound just like you'd expect them to. Unfortunately, KOF 2001's music isn't as good. From the series' beginning in 1994, its soundtracks were eclectic mixes of funk, jazz, '80s-style guitar rock, and heavy metal, though in later years, the soundtracks have degenerated into generic techno music. KOF's music is at an all-time low in 2001. Though it tries to hold to a theme of mostly bass and percussion, it all ends up being the same kind of bland, forgettable techno music you've heard about a zillion times in every other video game with a techno soundtrack.

Fortunately, if you play KOF 2001, you'll probably ignore the game's awful background stages and mediocre music, because you'll be too busy fighting it out to notice anything else. KOF 2001 has a roster of 40 different playable characters, but they're all remarkably well balanced; you can pit just about any of them against any other and have a fair fight. And every character has enough special attacks and strategies to be interesting--unlike in KOF 2000 and KOF '99, which simply dumbed down a lot of characters to favor the new striker system. Strikers--extra characters that you call in from offscreen to do a single attack or two--are still in KOF 2001, but they're much more balanced than in previous games and are actually completely optional in 2001. Basically, the game gives you four character slots, and you can choose as many playable characters as you want--four playable characters with no strikers, two playable characters and two strikers, and so on. If you don't pick any strikers, you characters will do less damage and won't be able to perform their most powerful super attacks; if you pick one or more strikers, you'll be able to do more damage and access super attacks, but you'll have fewer playable characters on your team. It's a system that resembles Capcom vs. SNK 2's ratio system, but it's much more balanced.

But that isn't all. KOF 2001 also has super cancel attacks, which let you quickly cancel a special attack and turn it into a super attack, as in Street Fighter EX and Street Fighter III. 2001 also has "wire attacks," which bounce your opponent off the corner of the screen and let you quickly hit your opponent with a follow-up attack, like the wall juggles in Guilty Gear X. You'll find plenty of skills to master in KOF 2001 without getting into the specifics of each of your favorite characters, though you'll definitely want to do that too, especially with some of the new characters in the game. For instance, the newcomer Mei Lee is a martial artist with two completely distinct fighting stances that you can switch between in an instant, while another newcomer, Angel, is a completely original and completely bizarre character with a huge set of special attacks that are keyed off of a single kick. And if you're playing the game at your arcade, you should actually be able to play some decent practice rounds in a single-player game, since the computer opponents generally aren't too tough, at least until you get to the end. The final battle with KOF 2001's boss character is probably the most insanely difficult and frustrating fight in the entire series. But if you're lucky enough to play KOF 2001 at an arcade with some actual competition, you'll find that the game holds up extremely well in head-to-head play.

Most King of Fighters diehards will tell you that '98 was the best game in the series because of its excellent character balance and its huge character roster (38 characters, plus 12 "alternate" versions of some characters) of very deep, interesting characters. KOF 2001 doesn't have the sort of flat-out character-against-character matchups that '98 did, because of its strikers and its varying team sizes, but it's still a great game in its own right. Its different options, striker and wire attacks, and sizeable character roster will let you play KOF 2001 for a good long time before you tire of it--and they also help make KOF 2001 one of the deepest 2D fighting games ever.